1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the systems and methods for applying the network communications to enhance delivery of the electro-magnetically transmissible contents from a sender to the designated recipients. More particularly, this invention is related to methods and network systems that allows a sender to control and direct, and allows a sender to specify among the many options, the delivery of either an article that embodies the Internet-deliverable contents or different functional devices that embodies the contents to designated recipients to achieve delivery speed while reducing the delivery costs.
2. Description of the Related Art
Even through more communications are now carried over the Internet with speed and greatly improved efficiency, however, there are still limitations that the Internet communications cannot satisfy. A most obvious limitation is a communication to a person who has limited or even no access to Internet. This group of people may include some elderly folks or economically disadvantageous people who do not use a computer or devices to have the Internet access at all. As senders of information often initiate a message that is suitable for Internet transmission, e.g., e-mail, the senders are required to apply a different mode of communication, e.g., sending the message as printed copy separately through regular mail services, in order to send the same message to a person who does not communicate over the Internet.
Furthermore, in the field of commercial advertisement, there are still a large amount of printed materials delivered through the regular mail services for promoting commercial products or services. However, such distribution of the printed materials for product or service promotion are limited to certain geographic locations, generally within the territory of a nation through the domestic mail services due to cost considerations. International delivery of printed materials would be too costly for mass mail promotions. Notwithstanding the availability of high-speed data transmission across the globe without national boundaries, an effective solution to overcome the geographic limitations of mail deliveries is still not yet available.
Further limitation of current electronic commerce over the Internet is the lack of control and flexibility of choices for a message or content sender. For example, it is true that a sender of gift or message is provided with options to order gift items from online shops for delivering to a recipient; however, the online shops under most circumstances dictate what and how the messages, and that the messages related with this order, are delivered to the message or gift recipient. A sender does not have much freedom to customize the fashion and ways the messages are delivered.
Another difficulty of the network communications over the Internet is related to the requirements that either a document must be personally delivered or that a returning document must be personally signed, sometimes before a notary public, in order to have certain legal validity. Particularly, when such document must be delivered to an area that require extended delivery processes and time, and the signatures of the senders and/or the recipients be required, the speed of the Internet transmission has not yet been utilized to provide a solution to overcome such difficulties. Current document systems are further limited by speed when technical or trade journals, magazines, or newspapers are delivered over the national boundaries of remote areas.
In order to overcome the above-discussed limitations and difficulties, a prior patent application Ser. No. 12/077,105 was submitted by the Applicant of the present invention to disclose systems and methods to deliver tangible deliverable objects that contain electronic contents including multimedia contents that may be transmitted over the telecommunication networks (TN) with its various sub-networks interconnected by the connections include but not limited to Internet, the wired and wireless telephone networks, cable systems, etc. The sub-networks of TN includes but not limited to Intranet, Wide Area Network (WAN), Metropolitan Area Network (MAN), Campus Area Network (CAN), Local Area Network (LAN), Wireless local area network (WLAN), Personal Area Network (PAN), Virtual Private Network (VPN), Client/Server Network, Peer-to-Peer Network, etc.
However, the delivery of a tangible deliverable object has several limitations. First limitation is a requirement of the involvement of a delivery agent and/or vehicle to accomplish the delivery of the tangible deliverable. It may be difficult where conditions limit the travel of the delivery agent and/or vehicle to reach the delivery destination. A second limitation is the time required for the process to deliver the tangible deliverable. Delivery may take relatively extended time in delivering to destinations due to travel difficulties, and/or other situations, even that the delivery process is much faster than the traditional mail system, especially under the circumstances when the delivery must cross over the state and national boundaries. Furthermore, a sender has only limited choices to select the final delivery form, i.e., in the form of a tangible deliverable.
Therefore, a need exists in the art of telecommunication network to provide improved system configuration to implement a delivery method for delivering contents transmitted over the telecommunication networks in more varieties of embodiments of the electronic contents through more varieties of delivery devices and routes such that the above-discussed difficulties and limitations may be resolved.